Friday, February 26, 2010

Apple Announces Winner of its 10 Billion Song Downloads Contest

Apple today announced that music fans have purchased and downloaded over 10 billion songs from the iTunes Store.

The 10 billionth song, “Guess Things Happen That Way” by Johnny Cash, was purchased by Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Georgia. As the winner of the iTunes Countdown to 10 Billion Songs, Louie will receive a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card.

“We’re grateful to all of our customers for helping us reach this amazing milestone,” said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “We’re proud that iTunes has become the number one music retailer in the world, and selling 10 billion songs is truly staggering.”




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Easy Money Management For Mac Users

For those who manage their money on a Mac, Quicken Essentials for Mac now available from Intuit Inc. Built from the ground up with the look and feel Mac users expect from their products, QEM, as it's known, provides a simple and easy way to handle the essentials of money management.

QEM launches a new era for Quicken on the Mac. It marks Intuit's first Mac-native application for Quicken, that is, a product developed specifically to run on a Mac operating system, instead of adapting a product originally designed for a PC. QEM's features serve a broad array of essential customer needs, focusing on quick set-up, ease-of-use, and Mac-like intuitiveness in design and workflow. The redesign reflects the influence of the Mint.com product team and its deep experience with Apple products.

"Quicken Essentials for Mac is the first Quicken product to take full advantage of the Mac operating system and development platform," said Aaron Patzer, vice president and general manager of Intuit's Personal Finance Group. "We're bringing a completely new Quicken experience to Mac users, helping them answer essential money questions - what do I spend, what do I earn, where do I stand on my budgets, what is my net worth, and where can I do better?"


Making Money Management Easier on a Mac
Infusing Quicken with the intuitiveness of the Mac, QEM makes financial management easier, featuring:

* Easier set up; faster to use: QEM offers the unique Mac look-and-feel, easy navigation, and all the keyboard shortcuts users expect on Mac. Setup only takes 10 minutes. Users simply search for their bank, and synch using their online credentials.
* Broad banking support; no data entry: QEM currently imports data from 12,000 financial institutions, with support from 18,000 expected by year end. This is nearly quadruple the previous support of banks, credit unions, credit card companies, brokerage houses and lending institutions. All of that means less data entry.
* Improved categorization; better understanding: QEM "learns" the most popular categories from users, improving categorization over time. This means users spend less time organizing transactions, and more time understanding where their money goes, and how to save and do more with their money.
* Easy conversion: The converter feature easily transfers historical data from past Quicken for Mac (2005, 2006 and 2007), Quicken for Windows (2007, 2008 and 2009), and Microsoft Money.

"We plan to continue using these new design and usability elements and bring them into additional personal finance products," said Patzer. "The combination of Quicken products and the talent of the Mint.com product team brings the best of both worlds to customers."

Mac users can join the Quicken Inner Circle user community to provide product feedback that will be used to determine future features and development priorities.


Pricing and Availability
Quicken Essentials for the Mac is $69.

Intuit continues to support Quicken Mac 2007 for those users who rely on features that have not been added to QEM, including:

* Stock lot accounting and other high-level investment tracking: QEM will show basic investment information, including net worth and changes in value. Detailed reporting similar to past Quicken Products is expected to be included in future versions
* Bill Pay: Because only 6 percent of Quicken users rely on this service, it wasn't added in the Essentials version of Quicken for Mac
* Integration with TurboTaxTM: The Essentials version is designed for day-to-day financial management, and may include more robust features, such as integration with tax products, in the future.


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Final Fantasy I and II Now Available in the App Store

Both Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II for the iPhone and iPod touch are now available in the App Store.

FINAL FANTASY
Initially released in Japan in 1987, the original FINAL FANTASY amazed audiences with its rich story and stunning graphics.

Players guide the Warriors of Light as they set out on a quest to restore the crystals to their former luster. Its side view battles, choice and promotion of character classes, and sprawling world explored with fantastic vehicles quickly became standards of the series. This game set the stage for all FINAL FANTASY games to come.

This edition also contains the bonus dungeons added to later editions of the game--the Soul of Chaos and the Labyrinth of Time.

You can purchase FINAL FANTASY from the App Store for $8.99.

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FINAL FANTASY II
The highly anticipated follow-up to the original FINAL FANTASY, released in Japan in 1988.

FINAL FANTASY II features the bitter and beautiful tale of four war-orphaned heroes who become embroiled in the conflict between the hostile Empire of Palamecia and the rebel resistance. Eschewing conventional leveling for a proficiency system that allows players to tailor their characters' growth, and incorporating a key term memory system that makes dialogue integral to gameplay, this game sparked the spirit of innovation for which the series has become known.

This edition also contains the bonus dungeons added to later editions of the game--the Soul of Rebirth and the Arcane Labyrinth.

You can purchase FINAL FANTASY II from the App Store for $8.99.

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Apple Patent Details iPhone Control By Swiping Finger Over Camera

On Feb 25, 2010, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a patent application from Apple that reveals a design to help users control their incoming calls and voicemail by simply swiping their finger over the external camera lens.

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In one embodiment of the invention, one can control functions of a portable handheld electronic device by swiping a finger across a camera lens of the device. In other embodiments, the user can control voicemail functions by tapping the device, which causes the device to vibrate or move. In one embodiment, to access his voice mailbox, a user may tap the phone to cause playback of a message to pause, tap the phone again to resume playback, swipe his finger over the camera lens in one direction to fast forward playback, and swipe his finger over the camera lens in another direction to rewind playback. These actions allow the user to control functions of voicemail review without removing the device from over his ear.

In another embodiment, functions for controlling call features utilize similar user actions or motions. Features such as merging multiple calls, putting a call on hold, and switching between or among multiple simultaneous calls may be controlled by single or double (or any number of) taps of the device, as detected by an accelerometer of the device. These taps may be preprogrammed by a manufacturer, or selected and programmed by a user.

Furthermore, a user may navigate a document being shown on a display screen of the device by guiding his finger over the camera lens. While viewing the display screen, the user holds the device in the palm of his hand in a supine position. Rather than pressing or sliding directional buttons next to the screen or touching a touch screen to navigate a webpage document or contacts list, the user may move his finger over the camera lens in the direction he wishes to navigate the page. For example, gliding the finger over the camera lens in an upwards direction navigates the page in an analogous upwards direction. Doing so allows the user to easily steer the display of the device in any direction, with the same hand that holds the device.
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The patent filing was submitted on August 21, 2008 and lists Chad G. Seguin, Justin, Gregg, and Michael M. Lee as the inventors.

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Selling Yourself to Reach internet success.

Where is all the help I am expected to get. Meanwhile I haven't any business and no advertisements set up.

obviously, I let her know what I presumed of her approach in definite terms. Think this person is going to last the distance? What sorts of strategies do you suspect she's capable of turning to chasing the almighty dollar?

So, let us take a practical look at affiliate marketing programs, what they can't and can do for your business and the way to maximise your odds of making a successful, long term business with them. But it is no different from preparing a resume or an individual history. You will want to look at your education or coaching, work experience, and your life experiences, and how all this outlines you as an individual in such an enormous market place. Think about what part of your education is related to who you are. What big events in your life like being married or single, raising kids, and maintaining long-time friendships contributed to shaping you? What would you change or keep the same presuming you'd have command over such matters? What have you gained from your experiences in life? Then inspect your work history. ) What assorted abilities did you obtain? What other occupations have you had? What things about standard work brought you to the web attempting to find income? Now try and decide how your education, life experiences, and work experience transliterate into your internet goals. Just be conscious of what the accord announces on the topic to avoid getting yourself into hot water. Here's a cool resource on plr pro.

Promoting somebody else's affiliate marketing program always demands that you divert traffic away from your internet site and towards somebody else's.

Look for affiliate marketing programmes that will credit you with not only THIS sale but all of the sales the shopper may make in the future.
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How it's possible to get Insanely top of the range affiliate Leads.

My target in this tiny article is to divulge to you some ideas that you have probably going to never heard before. Whether or not you are a program boss or an associate, or both, there should something valuable below. Idea one - associate Link Revolution if you are the owner of an affiliate marketing programme then increase the motivation of your affiliates by placing *their* link on your site? I mean that your index page *is* hardcoded to their affiliate link.

All you'd have to do is set up a redirect on your index page with their affiliate link in it. Why do this? Well, it'll get you a complete bucket full more affiliates for one thing. Are you able to think how they'll feel? "Wow, this merchant's going to credit me with all sales / sub-affiliates that come to his default page. " There are 2 techniques you might employ to revolve this, relying on your traffic. Concept 2 - Getting SubAffiliates if you're an affiliate and desire more sub-affiliates then you *must* provide an inducement to your customers / site visitors to join up under you. The most profitable affiliate marketing programmes will have the most competition. What does one mean by this? The best prospects you may ever get are folks who have just acquired a related product from you. Find a product related to the program your promoting. Go to any search website and type in resale permission, you'll get thousands of results. Do not stress about making anything on the opening product sale. Create an affiliate marketing programme for the product with a really high commission. Youll need a follow-up auto-responder for this.

Message one : this is going to be a message to thank the client for purchasing your product and should make a tiny mention of the way in which the associate product can help them. And you must mention the affiliate product again. Message three : Create a special offer that your client can only get thru your affiliate link. There are some cloaking devices out there now, no not the Klingon ones, the ones that use zero-frame technology to keep your URL present in the browser address bar at all times. If you're the owner of an affiliate marketing program why not supply a select few superaffiliates or JV partners their own cloaked redirect page on your site? Why do this? Well, if you do not they would do it from their site and you may lose the URL when visitors from your superaffiliate's site visit your own. This may lose you name recognition and potentially book-marking if they've got it in their minds to use only the unmitigated URL ( which should be your superaffiliate's site and not your own.
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Thursday, February 25, 2010

8 Main Providers for RSS Feeds Monetization

RSS feed is a popular data format used for serving users frequently updated content and they offer great opportunities to publishers who are looking for alternative systems to generate revenue from their original content.

An RSS (most commonly expanded as "Really Simple Syndication") document (which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place. 
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With the growing popularity of RSS feed-based syndication, many Internet publishers became concerned that subscribers to their RSS feeds would not be exposed anymore to the advertising on their web pages, as some readers could now read all of their content inside their RSS reader. In this light, some decided to publish only a short part of their articles in their RSS feeds so that those interested would click through to their site to read the rest of the content.

While initially this approach has given good results to those using it, recently more and more online publishers have decided to provide the full content of their articles inside their RSS feed not to alienate those readers on the move or offline who were frustrated by their inability to read the full content of the articles without clicking through to the main site.

Several years ago, several companies started to offer the opportunity to automatically insert ads inside RSS feeds. These RSS feed monetization services enable publishers to place ads inside their RSS feeds and earn money when these are read or clicked upon.

The revenue models offered by these RSS feed monetization services are different ones: they span from CPC, CPM to flat rate plans; additionally, publishers can choose between contextual text-based ads, banners and interstitial ads, which are often completely customizable.

Consider the following points, while exploring the topic of RSS Feed Monetization and developing a relevant strategy:
  • Type of ads: the typology of advertisement offered, whether contextual or random text links, banners, interstitial ads, etc.
  • Every how many posts the ad is shown: the exact positioning of ads within the RSS feeds.
  • Ability to select and approve the ads: the possibility for the publisher to choose which ads can be included and which cannot.
  • Stats about ads performance: the availability of a control panel that allows the publisher to monitor the revenue and performance of ads within RSS feeds
  • Rate: the method of payment offered to the publisher, whether CPC (Cost Per Click), CPM (Cost Per Mille – which estimates the cost per 1000 views of the ad) or flat rate
  • Requirements: special requirements that the publisher needs to have in order to insert ads in her RSS feeds (which might correspond to a high authority, pagerank and number of RSS feeds subscribers).
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Main Providers

Google AdSense for Feeds

AdSense for feeds allows web publishers to earn by placing targeted Google ads in their feeds. AdSense for feeds works the way the rest of the AdSense program works: by delivering ads that are relevant to your content and your readers.

Like other AdSense ads, feed ads can be paid in two ways: by click, or by impression. Feed ads can also be targeted in two ways.

  • contextually targeted to the content in your feed
  • targeted by advertisers to your specific feed when you set up an ad placement
You can control the frequency, appearance, and positioning of Google ads in your feeds. The ad size is automatically determined based on where your feed is appearing. You can get detailed instructions on how to start using the program on Google AdSense website.

Kannodle

Kanoodle is a pay-per click network which includes hundreds of thematic ad categories from which you can freely choose. Through BrightAds RSS, Kanoodle’s content-targeted sponsored links will be inserted directly into site owners’ RSS feeds within posts or as individual posts, with relevancy of the ads assured through Kanoodle’s topic-based approach. You can sign up for the partnership in the program from the company website.

Pheedo

Pheedo’s FeedPowered advertising platform converts your RSS feeds into rich, dynamically updating advertising that engages your audience. Pheedo retrieves your RSS feed several times an hour and updates your FeedPowered advertisements with any newly published items. With Pheedo FeedPowered you can also monetize your syndicated video content. Get started, signing for the Publisher section on the company website.

TextLinkAds

TextLinkAds provides a service to bloggers called Feedvertising, which allows them to run text link ads in their RSS feed. Whether the ads come from TextLinkAds, your own in-house efforts, or your affiliate links the choice is always up to you. Feedvertising is currently available only for WordPress 2.0+ users with more blogging platforms coming soon. There are no variable CPM rates or cost-per-click systems: publishers get paid according to a predictable flat rate pricing. Join the Publishers program, signing on the company website.

MediaFed

MediaFed is a service that lets you generate revenue from your feeds by inserting suitable advertising in the feed items. MediaFed ad placement system automatically inserts adverts into your feeds in one of two ways: either adverts are inserted every x number of articles where you control the value of x, or by matching keywords to your article contents to target relevant advertising. The program is mostly oriented on the European customers. You can inquire about the potential partnership, sending email, posted on the company website.

FeedShow

FeedShow is a web-based RSS feed reader and first the online aggregator to remunerate publishers theough Google AdSense. Revenues are generated by clicks on the displayed ads. FeedShow gives the publishers 50% of the revenues generated by the targeted ads. When displaying ads, both your Google AdSense codes and Feedshow codes are used, so that the number of ads displayed for the publishers account and the FeedShow account are the same. Google and the AdSense program will then pay the editors directly without any interaction with FeedShow. Sign in for the program on the company website.

AdGenta

AdGenta is a service that allows you to choose which advertisements to put onto your website or in RSS feeds by selecting specific keywords. You have total control over the advertisements your visitors see, because they are no longer bound to the content, but to your personal choice. Besides, there is no approval process or minimum traffic requirement to use AdGenta. You can join the program by signing in from the company website.

ThankYouPages

ThankYouPages is a service that allows publishers to insert advertising into the links contained within their RSS feeds. When a user clicks a link from your RSS feed, they will are shown a short, fully branded, interstitial advertisement between the click of the link, and the final destination. You have control over the look, feel, and format of the page, as well as how often offers appear to your user. If you are interesting to join a program, you need to complete first the ThankYouPages application process at http://www.thankyoupages.com/join_now/.


Sources and Additional Information:

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